Music (253)

BANGOR In celebration of a 2015 Summer/Fall North American Tour, Van Halen will perform a special concert for 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' March 30 on Hollywood Boulevard. Featuring some of the band's essential rock and roll classics, the concert will be broadcast over two nights, March 30 and March 31, on the late night talk show and marks Van Halen's first U.S. television performance with original lead singer David Lee Roth. 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. / 10:35 p.m. Central time on ABC.

Spencer Albee, a fixture in New England's music scene for more than two decades, has a lot on his mind these days.

Chief among the thoughts bouncing around his brain are the new songs he'll unveil this Saturday, March 21 at 7 p.m. as headliner of 'State of the State 3' a celebration of Maine music organized by Kyle Poissonnier and held annually at the State Theatre on Congress Street in Portland.

PORTLAND Grammy Award Winner Peter Frampton and power-pop Cheap Trick will co-headline at the Maine State Pier on June 26. Also, fresh off the biggest year of his storied career, 'Weird Al' Yankovic recently announced his 2015 Mandatory World Tour, making at stop at the Maine State Pier on Sunday, July 26, 2015 as part of the Machias Savings Bank Concert Series.

The opening moments of Pugwash's first Maine concert, last Thursday at Portland's Empire, set the tone for the evening. As the Irish band walked onstage to cheers, whoops and hoots, front-man Thomas Walsh greeted the crowd and heard his voice echo in the vocal monitor. 'Could you please remove the reverb?' he asked the man in charge of the mix. 'We're an anti-reverb band, you see. We don't want to sound like Simon Le Bon.'

As if they were reading each other's minds, the group launched a brief and mockingly dramatic reverb-soaked version of Duran Duran's 'Save A Prayer' much to the delight of the audience, some of whom had driven many hours to greet the Pugs on the fourth show of their first U.S. tour. 'Some came here from Kentucky to see us,' an incredulous Walsh commented later. 'You people are amazing.'

Writer Jesse Fink recalls the epiphany that lifted him from the dark funk that had permeated his life since going through a painful divorce. 'I was missing my wife and feeling quite despondent,' he told me in a phone interview from his home in Sydney, Australia.

'Instead of doing something stupid, I put on Gimme a Bullet' from AC/DC's Powerage' album. There was something about that song that kind of saved my life that night. The next day, I wondered What was it about that music that lifted me up at that time?''